Monday, December 12, 2011

The "Palestinian" Gag

From The Associating Press:

In one of the longest running gags of recent times, the "Palestinians" have finally admitted to a joke started in 1948 when the United Nations created the nation of Israel. "We had just been hanging out in the countryside at the time," said one of the many Arabs who was in on the joke. "We saw that the 'Jordanians' had made up a name for themselves... (Don't tell anyone but they're really Arabs with a made up name too)... and the Jews were calling themselves Israelis.

"So my Dad and some other guys got together at a pub in Jericho and had this great idea of calling ourselves, 'Palestinians.' Get it, we were in Palestine," he continued with a chuckle. "For a while we thought we might actually get a whole country out of it.

"Then some crazies started bombing things and killing people and it all went Ramallah. Frankly, I'm glad it's all over. It's been hard keeping up the joke all these years. We'll all be abandoning the desert and going back to Arabia in the next week or two."

10 comments:

Don't forget the biggest joke of all. Some bunch of riffraff ran away from Europe, stole a country from the locals, and invented a name for themselves. They expect us to call them 'Americans', and take them terribly seriously.

I don't know whether you have thought through the implications of this joke. It is actually very controversial and takes sides in the debate between zionists and Palestinians about their history. It is offensive because it seeks to minimize the seriousness of the events of the first Arab-Israeli war, which resulted in so many Arab refugees.

Richard, the intent (which I only reveal because you seem to have taken it opposite of how I meant it) was to have fun with Newt Gingrich's recent comments about the Palestinians being an "invented people." The perspective of the speaker in the post is meant to be seen as so obviously ridiculous as to point in the opposite direction, namely, that (as much as I like Israel), it was imposed on people who were already living there, whatever we might call them and that they have nowhere else to go.

In short, I'm sorry if this post was not understood to advocate the two state solution that has been repeatedly insisted on from the very beginning.

I see. I think. But how are your readers supposed to know about Newt Gingrich's recent comments? Not being from the USA, I only have a vague idea of who he is, and I haven't read all your blog post. And when people stumble upon your blog post in years to come, how will they understand your intent?

This kind of parody of Gingrich's position works only if the parody takes his views to a ridiculous extreme that no-one would ever argue for. The problem is that many Zionsist DO argue for a view of history that is very similar to the one in the parody. I have heard them do it. It is dangerous to try to parody extremism. It seems that the Associated Press has overlooked Poe's law. According to Wikipedia,

"Poe's law, named after its author Nathan Poe, is an Internet adage reflecting the fact that without a clear indication of the author's intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between sincere extremism and an exaggerated parody of extremism."

Gingrich's argument seems bizarre. Do people not have collective rights unless granted formal recognition of national identity by the noted historian from Georgia? Why not?

If you look back far enough, every nation is an invention. Certainly the Americans and the modern nation of Israel, as noted herein. And how many nations today are actually just a collection of tribes on the same plot of ground, held together politically by duct tape and baling wire? Look at Switzerland, Belgium, India, China. In the Middle East, look at the history of modern day Iraq and Saudi Arabia to see how artificial political boundaries were imposed on people without their consent.